THE SPIRITUALITY OF JESUITS

Unexpected Consequences 4 Jesuit

and Puritan Book, Robert

Directory,

and

Its

Persons's Christian

Relevance for Jesuit Spirituality Today

[AMES F. KEENAN, SJ.

X LIBRARY

1

CD

CM 33/2

COLLEGE

•

MARCH

2001

THE SEMINAR ON JESUIT SPIRITUALITY The Seminar

composed of

is

number

a

of Jesuits appointed

from their provinces

in

the United States.

concerns

with topics pertaining to the spiritual doctrine and practice of Jesuits, especially United States Jesuits, and communicates the results to the members of the provinces through its publication, STUDIES IN THE SPIRrTUALITY OF JESUITS. This is done in the spirit of Vatican II's recommendation that religious institutes recapture the original inspiration of their founders and adapt it to the circumstances of modern times. The Seminar welcomes reactions or comments in It

itself

regard to the material that

The Seminar

it

publishes.

focuses

The

of the United States.

issues treated

regions, to other priests, religious,

journal, while

meant

who may

Others

on the

direct attention

its

and

may

life

and work of the

common also to Jesuits of other both men and women. Hence, the

be

laity, to

American Jesuits, is not exclusively cordially welcome to make use of it.

especially for

find

helpful are

it

Jesuits

for

them.

a writer at

Cam-

Boston College, Chestnut

Hill,

CURRENT MEMBERS OF THE SEMINAR William A. Barry, S.J., directs the tertianship program and pion Renewal Center, Weston, (1999).

is

MA

Richard A. Blake,

MA Philip

J.

teaches film studies

S.J.,

at

(1998).

Chmielewski,

S.J.,

teaches religious social ethics

at

Loyola University,

Chicago, IL (1998).

Richard

Hauser,

J.

teaches theology and directs the graduate programs in

S.J.,

and

theology, ministry,

spirituality at

Creighton University, Omaha,

NE

(1998).

James

F.

Keenan,

Cambridge,

ogy,

Thomas M.

teaches moral theology at

S.J.,

Lucas,

MA

S.J.,

Weston

(2000).

chairs the

Department of Fine and Performing Arts and

teaches therein at the University of San Francisco,

Douglas W. Marcouiller, Hill,

Thomas

MA P.

Jesuit School of Theol-

S.J.,

CA

teaches economics at Boston College, Chestnut

(2000).

O'Malley,

S.J.,

is

associate

dean of

arts

and sciences and teaches in

the honors program at Boston College, Chestnut Hill,

John

W Padberg,

tor

and editor

William R. Rehg,

MO

(1998).

S.J.,

at

is

MA

(2000).

chairman of the Seminar, editor of STUDIES, and

the Institute of Jesuit Sources (1986).

S.J.,

teaches philosophy at

St.

Louis University,

St.

Louis,

(2000).

The opinions expressed

in

STUDIES

are those of the individual authors thereof.

Parentheses designate year of entry as a Seminar member.

Copyright

© 2001 and published by

3601 Lindell Blvd., (Tel.

direc-

St.

Louis,

MO

the Seminar

63108

314-977-7257; Fax 314-977-7263)

on

Jesuit Spirituality

Unexpected Consequences A

and Puritan Book, Robert Persons's Christian Directory, and Its Relevance

Jesuit

for Jesuit Spirituality Today

James

F.

Keenan,

S.J.

STUDIES IN THE SPIRITUALITY OF JESUITS 33/2 -MARCH 2001

NEW BOOK! The Road from La Storta Peter-Hans Kolvenbach,

on Ignatian

S.J.,

Spirituality

"The vision of La Storta has not been given to us so that we might stop to gaze at it. No, it is the light in which the Jesuit regards the whole world."

These words are from a homily on the anniversary of

St.

Ignatius's vision at

La

Storta.

Father

Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, superior general of the Society of Jesus, challenges Jesuits and their associates to consider their mission as they follow Ignatius along the road from La Storta into the wide world. In this collection of twenty essays, Father Kolvenbach proposes ways of understanding this mission from spiritual, analytical, and socio-pastoral perspectives.

xv

+ 300 pages

ISBN 1-880810-40-9

$28.95 plus postage

Of all

things

.

.

.

come upon stories demonstrating that Jesuits continue to put their imaginations to good use. The most recent example is the Youth Parliament that Fr. Francis Oliva established in Paraguay. Over the last several years, it has numbered more than a thousand young people from all over that country who took It is a

joy to

an active part in educating themselves in politics and preparing to become involved in public affairs in the years to come. They participate in a yearlong series of courv

do volunteer work, gather

would "represent," work

a certain

for

number

two years

whom

of signatures of citizens

they

months

as "legislators," and, after six

in

regional government, go to the capital at Asuncion to take their seats in the national

House of Representatives

for further

Good news from

work.

another part of the world too: In India the national

journal India Today in a cover story listed the

"Top Ten Colleges

in India" in the

commerce, etc. Three Jesuit schools are among those top St. Xavier's in Mumbai (Bombay), Loyola in Chennai (Madras), and St. Xavier's in Calcutta. What an alumnus said of one of them might well be said of all: "[A]nd when a student arts, science,

.

bids adieu to the College, he doesn't leave just with a degree but also

with the conscience of tions to

all

a

.

.

.

.

.

of course,

,

morally and intelligently enriched individual." Congratula-

them and

three of the schools and thanks both to

to

of the

all

more than

three dozen institutions of Jesuit higher education in India for their accomplishments in that apostolate.

attention

And halfway between those two parts of the world, we can turn our to Rome and the cardinals recently created by Pope John Paul II. It is

striking that nineteen of the forty-four

new

alumni or

cardinals, almost half, are

former faculty members of the Gregorian University. The College of Cardinals, of course,

is

not the Church, but

it

renders a very important service to

of the Church; therefore the Gregorian justifiably can rejoice over to prepare cardinals for such service.

two

institutions in the

Institute, are

A

worth the

The Gregorian

Gregorian Consortium, the effort

member!

University, along with the other

Biblical Institute

and the Oriental

and resources that the Society of Jesus puts into them.

blood for the Church.

Twentieth Century (Crossroad Publishers,

New

77;c

to witness

Catholic Martyrs of

York, x + 430 pages)

is

I

.m Utterly

who

have actually died their blood in vividly told stories range from those ol well-known mart vis. wen

absorbing, hauntingly edifying story of those

such witness.

The

as the Jesuits

of El Salvador and Archbishop

the Iron Curtain

the

part in belpill

its

few words on three recent books. Cardinals may wear red

their willingness to shed their

fell,

lived long

and

Romero,

died, often

As Pope John Paul II has said, "At Church has once again become a Church

lands.

all

to those

anonymously,

who, unknown

until

in so-called at In

the end of the second millennium, the

of martyrs."

111

From

we move on to juvenile gangs and meditations: (Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, 220 pages) is what the

martyrs and cardinals

Eyes on the Cross

author, Michael Kennedy, juvenile gang

S.J., calls

members and

"a guide for contemplation" that he uses with

incarcerated offenders as well as with teachers, business

and high-school students. Fr. Kennedy is pastor of Dolores Mission Parish, a very poor church in Los Angeles. Each of the meditations is brief; each is based on a leaders,

passage

from In

Scripture; each has a series of questions for reflection.

Good Company by James Martin,

subtitled The Fast Track

from

the Corporate

(Sheed and Ward, 216 pages)

S.J.

World

is

to Poverty, Chastity, Obedience. Fr.

Martin, one of the editors of America, directly, humorously, and thoughtfully writes

membership in the Society of Jesus. The central part of the book takes him from Wharton, the famous business school at the University of Pennsylvania, to corporate finance at General Electric, and finally to the Jesuit novitiate in the New England Province. Every U.S. Jesuit could read this book with real enjoyment and equal profit to himself. And after he has done so, he ought to be eager to give it to any young man thinking of a vocation to the Society. the story of his vocation to

For some reason, Jesuit mathematicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were attracted to fireworks. Jean Leurechon, about whom I wrote in the

November 2001

issue of

STUDIES, made use of them. In his book,

Artificial Fireworks,

on "the making of rockets and balls of fire," he also hoped that the spectator's "spirit which follows the motion of fire, will abandon the elements and cause you to lift up your eyes to soar in a higher contemplation, [causing] your affections also to ascend." Anther Jesuit mathematician and pyrotechnician was Dominique de Colonia (1658-1714) of Lyons. In 1734, during a special celebration of the feast of John the Baptist, various of his firework displays spelled besides giving directions

.

.

.

out in detail the spiritual favors to be gained: "fountains of grace, tears of repentance, and, in a blazing finale, the the originator of the

"

fire

of charity." Last of

Ceva Theorem," having

to

all,

Tommaso Ceva

do with

content himself with joining fireworks and mathematics. the libretti for

more than

a

trisecting

He was

dozen oratorios that were performed

(1648-1737),

an angle, did not

also the author of at

the Jesuit college

and church in Milan. Their titles included Serenade at the Crib, Adam's Sin, The Triumph of Chastity, and what —in view of the scope of its words and music —we can only leave to the imagination with which I began these comments: "The Holy Trinity in Council on the Hypostatic Union."

Oh,

for the days of Jesuit polymaths!

John W. Padberg, Editor

IV

S.J.

CONTENTS Setting the Scene

1

The Story

2

Persons's Text

9

The Puritan Editions

17

So What?

23

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

27

V

Images and Emblems from the Early Jesuit Tradition to Use in Desktop Publishing or

on the

Web

by

Thomas Rochford, and

A

J. J.

collection of

239

formatted for

The Institute 3601 Lindell St.

Louis, tel:

fax:

S.J.,

Mueller, S.J.

royalty-free images already

Windows and Macintosh

of Jesuit Sources

Blvd.

MO

63108 [314] 977-7257 [314] 977-7263

e-mail: [email protected]

$25.00 plus postage

Unexpected Consequences A

and Puritan Book, Robert Persons's Christian Directory, and Its Relevance for Jesuit Spirituality Today Jesuit

Setting the Scene

Many

books being read by the "wrong" For instance, the Jesuit moralist Antonio Escobar y

are the stories about Jesuit

people.

Mendoza By taking

make

more accessible. the cases out of their contexts and publishing them in abbreviated form, Escobar provided Blaise Pascal with the very ammunition he needed for his devastating assaults on the Society of Jesus. (1589-1669)

decided

to

casuistry

Jesuit

1

Jesuit

books have seriously backfired, especially when their authors

did not foresee that the actual readership would surpass the intended audience.

Among

Persons's

tales that

Christian Directory

Persons's

place.

many

the

confirm

this

insight,

probably merits the dubious honor of

work, designed to arouse English

Church of Rome, became

fervent loyalty to the

the Jesuit Robert

Roman

Catholics

instead the

first

to

first

Puritan

We

need to

bestseller in the English language.

What then answer

is

the story of Person's Christian Directory}

this question to

tation of the First

understand

Week

how

a Jesuit

work, basically an interpre-

of the Spiritual Exercises of

St.

Ignatius, so effective-

Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: Reasoning (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 231-49.

James University,

is

F.

Keenan,

S.J.,

A

History of Moral

with a doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Gregorun

a professor of Moral Theology at Weston Jesuit School of TJjeology. Virtues

Ordinary Christians, Commandments of Compassion (Sheed and Ward), and Catholic Ethicists on HIV/AIDS Prevention are among his recent publications. He is presently working on a collection of essays tentatively entitled Church Leadership and Corporal Works of Mercy. His address is Weston Jesuit School of Tlieology, 3 Phillips for

Place,

Cambridge,

MA

02138.

2

*

James

ly addressed

its

Keenan,

F.

S.J.

Puritan readership.

What

look

at

Long

after other Puritan

the text.

Knowing

the story inevitably leads us to

did Persons write? Another important issue

is

this:

works appeared, Persons's work remained a success well into the 1630s and had again as many sales as either of the great Puritan classics— Arthur Dent's Plaine Man's Pathway to Heaven and William Per2 kins's Foundation of Christian Religion. No contemporary Puritan text enjoyed such popularity and no other work of devotion compared to it. The historian Helen White called it "incomparably the most popular book of spiritual guidance

in sixteenth-century England."

Milward observes,

it

reigned as "the most popular

And

the historian Peter

book

of devotion

among

both Catholics and Protestants in Elizabethan and Jacobean England." So what? What does

mean

contemporary self-understanding when one of the most important written works among second-generation Jesuits found its most fervid readership among early English Puritans? The relevance of Persons's work on our spirituality today bears examination. it

These four topics— the

and the "so what?"

— need

for our

story, Persons's text, the Puritan editions,

to be considered.

The Story and eeelesial reasons that we cannot confer here, Elizabeth I promulgated the Act of Supremacy in 1559, thereby imposing several sanctions on Roman Catholics. Although these penalties were not regularly enforced, they had a debilitating effect on the

ForQueen

several political

Catholic community.

5

Moreover, because

many

priests

subsequently con-

formed to the Church of England, Catholics wishing to remain faithful to Rome were left leaderless. Then, in 1570 Pope Pius V issued the bull Regnans in excelsis, excommunicating Elizabeth and declaring her no longer the English sovereign. English Roman Catholics were now politically compromised by their religious leader, who offered them little by way of spiritual or

2

Wisconsin

Helen White, Tudor Books of

Saints

and Martyrs (Madison: University of

Press, 1963), 205. 3

Brad Gregory, "The

Edmund Bunny, and

The

First

True and Zealous Service of God: Robert Parsons, Booke of the Christian Exercise," Journal of

Ecclesiastical

History 45 (1994): 239. 4

Peter Milward, Religious

Controversies of the Elizabethan Age:

A

Survey of

Printed Sources (London: Scolar Press, 1977), 73-74. 5

Patrick McGrath, Papists and Puritans under Elizabeth I (London: Blandford

Press, 1967), 10-14, 52-57.

Unexpected Consequences: Persons's Christian Directory

•!•

3

moral direction. In fact, the ill-timed action prompted Elizabeth to respond in 1571 with even stifTer political penalties against them.

Without pastoral leadership, English Roman Catholics were caught in a squeeze play. Few knew whether to move toward or away from the Church of England. After the papal bull, they were even more confused: If Elizabeth was not the legitimate sovereign, what were they to do? One militant, John Felton, took matters into his own hands and fixed the papal bull to the gate of the bishop of London. Subsequently he was apprehended and executed for treason against the Crown.

^

In 1568, recognizing the need for priests, Dr. William Allen opened a

seminary in Douay and

six years later sent the first

ordained graduates

back to England. In 1579 another continental seminary, the English College in

Rome, came

into

being.

^^^—^^— Between 1574 and 1580 one hundred missionary priests jn 15?J fa fi rst priest was caught> went to England Despite the , and quartered political tension between the England. Pope and the Queen, Allen and his priests responded to ^^^^mmm_mm^^mi^^^^mmmmil^^^^^^_m^^^^ the religious needs of the nearly abandoned Roman Catholics. Unfortunately, these priests, whose work was basically spiritual, were perceived as agents of a foreign power and political threats to the monarchy. Thus, in 1577 the first priest was caught, hanged, drawn, and quartered in England, and a year later another was

^

^M>

m

executed.

6

Edmund

In 1580 a group of priests and laymen, including the Jesuits

Campion and Robert Persons Jesuits

any

left

Rome

for England.

charge

is,

of free cost, to preach the gospel, to minister the sacraments,

reform sinners, to confute errors, and

in brief to

cry alarm spiritual against foul vice and proud ignorance wherewith dear countrymen are abused.

With to

the

passage

know how many

authority of the

in

As Campion explained,

to instruct the simple, to

difficult

These

were expressly forbidden by their superiors to become involved

political activities.

My

(1546-1610),

I

never had in mind, and

of time, priests

Queen and only

the

to

strictly

forbidden

only worsened. While

situation

from 1582

am

my

it

remains

1588 actually accepted the political

pastorally ministered to the recusants, their spiritual

mission was completely compromised by the attempted Spanish invasion in 1588.

By 1590

another seventy-five priests and twenty-five lay people were executed by the government (see

McGrath,

Papists

and

Puritans,

177).

From

1590

till

the end of Elizabeth's reign,

another fifty-three priests and thirty-five lay people were executed

(ibid., 256).

James

Keenan,

F.

S.J.

wiwmwm. by our

me, to deal

fathers that sent

any respect with matters of

in

policy of the realm, as things which appertain not to

my

vocation.

state

or

7

Campion and Persons learned expedition against Ireland. Knowing

Shortly before arriving in England,

Pope had sponsored a military that this move further compromised the integrity of their spiritual mission, both sought to dissociate themselves from any political movements as soon as they arrived in London in the summer of 1580. Anticipating disaster and that the

wanting to dispel possible

one of the English recusants asked Campion to write an explanation of his mission. Campion responded with his Bragge, which was to be published only in the event of his capture. Unfortunately, the recusant made a few copies of it, and some of these fell false charges,

who

into Protestant hands,

turn published the Bragge to expose the

in

group's mission and to respond to

became

it

polemically.

The Bragge suddenly

popular read.

a

The popularity

Campion's Bragge incensed the government, which launched an extensive manhunt to locate the two Jesuits. In early 1581 Elizabeth passed more legislation against the recusants and their 8 priests. Later that year, Campion was captured, hanged, drawn, and quar9 tered. Persons escaped to the continent, but was tried and condemned in of

absentia.

When books of

spiritual

them

1574, they brought with

the missionaries arrived in

comfort to encourage Catholic perseverance.

10

When

Persons arrived in England in 1580, he contacted the printer Stephen Brinkley

the secret Greenstreet

at

several

works

7

House

either to defend or encourage the recusant population.

Edmund Campion, "The

(Boston: Little,

Brown, and Company,

Bragge," in Evelyn

McGrath, Papists and Puritans, 177 ff.; York: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 47 fT.

McCoog,

"

11

Waugh, Edmund Campion

1946), 236.

8

On

and together they published

press,

Elliot Rose,

Cases of Conscience

the effects of Campion's writings, mission, and death, see

'The Flower of Oxford': The Role of

Edmund Campion

(New

Thomas

in Early Recusant

Polemics," Sixteenth Century Journal 24 (1993): 899-913. 10

One was John

Fowler's

new

Antwerp

against Tribulation, published in

Thomas More's Dialogue of Cumfort

edition of in 1573.

On

More's work,

A

Dialogue of Cumfort against (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965), xi-xxxi.

helpful

introduction in

11

Tribulation,

Persons's Brief Discours contayning certayne reasons

why

see ed.

Leland Miles's

Leland Miles

Catholiques refuse to

goe to Church (London, 1580). Persons argued that the recusants were not obstinate, but rather people of conscience

subsequent

calls

Consciences:

for

who

toleration

The English

merited toleration.

of

Roman

On

Catholics,

the influence of this

see

work on

Kenneth Campbell, "Tender

Catholics' Case for Religious Toleration in the Seventeenth

Unexpected Consequences: Persons's Christian Directory

knew about

Persons

Brinkley

because

year

a

5

the

earlier

latter

published an English translation of Exercitio delta vita Christiana (1557) by the Spanish Jesuit Gaspar Loarte

This popular work of lay

(1498-1578).

went through fifteen continental editions before the end of the century and was translated into Spanish (1569), French (1580), and later, German (1653). 12 The English edition was reprinted on three later occasions, and in 1594, the Puritan Mr. Bannister "Puritanized" it for Protestants; 13 that hinted at the is, he pirated its copyright and deleted any passages that righteousness of works or any other theological position rejected by the spirituality

^

Reformers.

Loarte's work, the Society of Jesus' successful because vigilant

about

served as a guide for lay persons

it

Christian

the

Without the regimented

life.

daily

order of religious

life,

agenda, Loarte provided read-

with

warnings: company, (3)

(1)

shun

(2)

beware of excess,

the

Roman

a

it

who

served as a guide for sought to be vigilant

""

~"™^mm^"—

(4)

life.

do not be surprised by temptation. These commonplace in both Jesuit and Puritan writings.

out right models, and

warnings became

of a

about the Christian

search

(5)

The Exercise

^^

because

lay persons

idleness,

avoid dangerous places,

Century," Grail

cessful

fundamental Watch your

six

sought to be

Christian Life, the Society of Jesus' first devotional handbook, was SUC-

for ordinary

daily prayer. Within that ers

who

^^^_^^^^^^^^_

Loarte's work,

the laity found in Loarte's

work an agenda

devotional handbook, was

first

3 (1987):

(6)

six

The Perseverance

68-83; Christine Kooi, "Popish Impudence:

of

Catholic Faithful in Calvinist Holland, 1572-1620," Sixteenth Century Journal

26 (1995): 75-85. Also,

Thomas Clancy, "Notes on

of England (1596)," Recusant History 5 fainthearted was

Thomas

(1959):

Hide's Consolatorie

Persons' s Memorial for the Reformation 'I

17-34.

epistle

to

Also written to encourage the the affected catholikes,

originally

published in Louvain in 1579 and probably brought to England by Persons. Also see

A. C. Southern, Elizabethan Recusant

Prose,

1559-1582 (London: Sands and Co.

1949),

207-10, 347-63. 12

Bibliotheque de

Schepens, 1890-19), 13

4, col.

la

Compagnie de

1879-1886,

s.v.

Jesus,

ed.

Aloys de Backer

(Brussels:

O.

"Loarte, Gaspar."

Gaspar Loarte, The Exercise of a Christian

life

(London: Stephen Brinkley,

1579); reprint in English Recusant Literature series, vol. 44 (Menston: Scolar Press, 1970).

Bibliographical materials are found in Spiritualite (Paris:

Manuel Ruiz Jurado's entry

Beauchesne, 1976), 9:950-1,

s.v.

in

Dictionnaire de

"Loarte, Gaspar"; see also A.

and G. R. Redgrave, A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed Ireland, 1475-1640 (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1976),

in

W.

Pollard

England, Scotland, and

2:108.

6

James

•!•

F.

Keenan,

S.J.

'&%%%%%&%%&&&%%%%&

Through

work,

Loarte's

as

well

the

as

texts

Brinkley and

that

Persons copublished, the Greenstreet House press provided a devotional

foundation for the loyal recusants. Knowing for another population, those Catholics selves to a

more devout Christian

14

life.

this,

Persons decided to write

who had

not yet committed them-

Originally conceived to

Loarte's work, Persons 's First Booke of The Christian Exercise, as

By

named

the third edition, Persons

work The

was

first

Christian Direc-

five editions

and was translated into French, German, Latin, and

Italian version itself ran

by Catholic Italian;

the

through nine editions. 16 The Puritanized adaptation

was much more popular, however, and went through forty-seven

it

editions between 1584 and 1640.

On

17

Persons see Francis Edwards, Robert Persons

Sources, 1995); Joseph Crehan, "Fr. Persons,

the Queen, see

Thomas Clancy,

felt

toward him, see

Persons's written positions regarding

114-40; 205-27; 7 (1961): 2-10.

see Victor

On

the extraordinary

Houliston, "The Fabrication of the

On

Parsons," Recusant History 22 (1974): 141-51.

Campion,

Louis: Institute of Jesuit

"English Catholics and the Papal Deposing Power, 1570-

1640," Recusant History 6 (1960):

antipathy

On

(St.

English Spiritual Writers, ed. Charles

S.J.," in

Davis (London: Burns and Oates, 1961), 84-96.

of

his

This text subsequently went through another

printers

of

it

appeared in 1582. 15

called,

tory.

accompany

John Bossy, "The Society of

Myth

of Father

Persons's political efforts after the death

Jesus in the

Wars

of Religion," in Monastic

The Continuity of Tradition, ed. Judith Loades (Bangor, UK: Headstart History, 1990), 229-44; id., "The Heart of Robert Persons," in The Reckoned Expense, ed. Thomas

Studies:

McCoog

(Woodbridge, England: Boydell Press, 1996),

Directory, see

my "How

Casuistic

Is

141-58.

On

Persons's

Early British Puritan Casuistry? or,

Christian

What Are

the

Roots of Early British Puritan Practical Divinity?" in The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540-1773, ed. John O'Malley et al. (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1999), 62740. Finally, see the definitive

The

First

(Brill:

Booke of

work, Robert Persons,

S.J.,

The Christian Directory (1582):

the Christian Exercise, appertayning to Resolution, ed. Victor

Houliston

Leiden, 1998).

on Persons and the development of English Puritan practical divinity, my research here depends, not on Houliston's wonderful new edition, but rather on the older one, Robert Persons, The Inasmuch

as

I

have

been

working

for

several

years

Christian Directory, reprint of 1607 edition in English Recusant Literature series, vol 41

(Menston, Yorkshire: Scolar Press, 1970). References to the Directory in this essay are from this source. 15

See Southern's discussion in Recusant Prose, 183; also Robert Persons, Letters

and Memorials of Father Robert

Parsons, ed. L.

Hicks (London: John Whitehead and Son,

Ltd, 1942), xliv-v; and Houliston, Christian Directory, xxxv.

Hicks, Letters and Memorials, ed. L. Hicks, 17

xliv.

Pollard and Redgrave, Short-Title Catalogue 2:217-18.

Unexpected Consequences: Persons's Christian Directory

adaptation of

it

H*

was much more popular, however, and went through

forty-

17 seven editions between 1584 and 1640.

That Persons's text became Puritanized is drenched with irony. It was penned by a Jesuit who sought to reclaim Catholics conforming to the Church of England. It was pirated by a Puritan preacher, Edmund Bunny

who

(1540-1618),

used

it

not only to answer the needs of his listeners but

between the Church of Rome and the Church of England were minor. Bunny belonged to the moderate Puritans, those Reformers who from about the mid- 1570s remained also to convince Catholic readers that the differences

within the Church of England, trying to offer

renewal and a theological reform.

work was to get Catholics Church of England! 18

to

One

its

reason, then,

conform to

members a devotional why Bunny edited the

a Puritan spirituality within the

Moreover, the Jesuit author, Robert Persons, who had been tried for treason against the Crown, who was convicted and sentenced to death, and who later, along with Dr. William Allen (1532-1594), organized the missionary effort to England—

same man became confessor to the King of Spain and urged him to subsequently that

one sought with

The Puritanized adaptation of the Christian Directory was much more popular, however, and went through

more passion, conviction,

forty-seven editions between

and cunning to

J584 and 1640.

launch the Spanish invasion of

No

England.

intelligence,

wrest

the

authority

the

of

Reformers away from the Crown than did Robert Persons; yet not

— ^—^———— -

— —^^—

^—^~

only did his most successful writing achievement give

was used to help devout Catholics in good conscience to accommodate conformity to the Church of England. As the succor to his opponents,

17

18

it

also

Pollard and Redgrave, Short-Title Catalogue 2:217-18.

Edmund Bunny,

"Treatise

toward Pacification," A2a-A3a,

Christian exercise appertaining to Resolution, that selves to

become Christians

Tending

to

Pacification

is

Booke of shewing how that we should rcsoh our

in deed: by R. P. Perused,

(London: N. Newton,

in

his

and accompanied now with a

1585).

See

Treatise

The Dictionary of National

Oxford University Press, 1973), 3:271-72, s.v. "Bunny, Edmund"; Nancy Lee Beaty, "Parsons, Bunny, and the Counter-Reformation 'Crafte,'" in The Craft of Dying: A Study in the Literary Tradition of the Ars Moriendi in England (New Haven: Biography

(Oxford:

Yale University Press, 1970), 157-96.

8

*

James

F.

Keenan,

S.J. sssy/ssyzv*v/?y/#/?xz

Puritans. In 1585 (after having issued fifteen editions that year!), Bunny's

complained to the Privy Council that another publisher (a Mr. Barnes) was printing copies at Oxford, thereby interfering with "the most vendible copy that happened in our company these many years [which] would have kept us in work for a long time." 20 They lost the case, and printers

Barnes was not the only one to pirate Bunny. In the same year the Puritans J.

Windet and T. Dawson both published

Though we do not know

the

their

own

number

editions.

21

of books in each run,

these editions give us an idea of the breadth of Persons's influence.

still

Two

simple testimonies give us an idea of the depth of influence that his text exerted on the emerging Puritan

movement

twenty years after Bunny's Richard Rogers authored the

edition

first

first

in

England.

appeared,

the

in

First,

1603,

famous preacher

major Puritan devotional

tract,

The Seven

In the preface, he presents his reasons for writing:

Treatises.

we have nothing set out for the Christian, when yet they have published

[T]hat the Papists cast in our teeth that certainty and daily direction of a

(they say)

which

I

many

Treatises of that argument. ...

have seen,

set

forth

by them

later

grant that there are

in our English tongue, the

a Christian Directory, the other the Exercise

Rogers

I

of a Christian

maintained that he wrote his

one

two

called

21

Life.

treatise

precisely

to

supplant the influence of Persons's Christian Directory

The second testimony comes from Richard Baxter (1614-1691), the British Puritan divine and casuist par excellence, whose most celebrated work was suitably named Christian Directory and who attributed his conversion to reading Persons's work for the first time.

A poor day-Laborer in my Father, which was

the

Town

called

the Jesuit, and corrected by

.

.

.

had an old torn book which he

lent

Bunny's Resolution (being written by Parsons

Edm. Bunny.

.

.

.

And

in the reading of this

was about Fifteen years of Age) it pleased God to awaken my Soul, and show me the folly of Sinning and the misery of the Wicked, and the unexpressible weight of things Eternal, and the necessity of resolving on a Holy Life, more than I was ever acquainted with before. The same

Book (when

20

I

Herbert Thurston, "Catholic Writers and Elizabethan Readers," The Month 87

(1894): 468. 1

22

Leading

to

Gregory, "True and Zealous Service."

Richard Rogers,

Seven

Treatises:

Containing Directions,

Out of

True Happiness, 3rd ed. (printed by Ezechiel Culverwell, 1610),

preface. 23

Ibid, fifth to tenth pages of the preface.

fifth

Scripture,

page of the

Unexpected Consequences: Persons's Christian Directory

which I knew before came now 24 Sense and Seriousness to my Heart. things

in

another manner, with Light, and

Roman

In his attempt to renew apathetic English sons's Directory gave the

9

•!•

emerging Puritans their

first

Catholics, Per-

and most sustained

spiritual classic.

Persons's Text

The

was divided into two parts: the first was an extended reflection on the need for Christians to resolve to live a devout life; the second contained five major impediments that kept readers from resolution and offered remedies to remove those impediments. Christian Directory

The

entire

work was addressed

Though devotional "dumb preachers," whose

to individuals.

manuals of the time were sometimes described

as

words could be read but not heard, the manuals were not addressed

to

attentive

readers to reflect

on

congregations.

their

own

25

Rather,

they

The

personal experience.

like

directed

sermons

individual

were already

Jesuits

inclined in this "personalist" direction, inasmuch as their spirituality appreciated the importance of an individual's unique relationship with God. More-

which often defended the individual's con26 further encouraged a personal relationship with God.

over, in their ethical teaching, science, Jesuits

In The Christian Directory, Persons turned this general appreciation for

one's

unique

self-understanding

into

an

surpassed any earlier devotional expression of

it.

introspective

A

exercise

that

contemporary of Persons,

Dominican Luis de Granada, for instance, usually described meditations on the passion of Jesus by inviting the readers to turn their eyes away from themselves and onto Christ. Likewise, Loarte, after prompting introspection the

in the evening meditations, encouraged readers to look not within but ahead

to the long road of perfection before them. But Persons, addressing those

Richard Baxter, Reliquiae Baxteriance (1696),

as

cited

in

A.

C.

Southern,

Recusant Prose, 186. 5

John Roberts, A Critical Anthology of English Recusant Devotional 1603 (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1966), 5. John O'Malley, The

First Jesuits

Prose,

1558-

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993),

136-52. Persons wrote about the conscience both in his Brief Discours and later in the

Memoriall.

On

Christian individualism and Jesuit spirituality

defense of conscience, see

Thomas Clancy,

Pamphleteers: The Allen-Persons Party in England,

and

as

well as Persons's

"Persons's Memoriall," esp. 26-7;

the Political

id.,

own Papist

Thought of the Counter-Reformation

1572-1615 (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1964), 142-58.

^

10

James

who had

F.

Keenan,

SJ.

not yet seen the need for the Lord, turned the readers' eyes

specifically

onto the

self.

Persons's fundamental concern was with what readers had failed to do. it,

The most

was "inconsideration"; because of 27 to recognize the urgent predicaments facing them. To

offensive of their omissions

readers also failed

rouse

them from

their failures, Persons invited individual readers to "enter

into cogitation of his

own

estate,

while he has the time"

(1).

Against inconsideration, Persons prescribed "consideration, " denned as

"an earnest and intense cogitation to find out the truth of matters"

This consideration exclusively focused on the readers themselves:

'

(11).

[WJhere-

your consideration begin from your self, and not only this, but end also in your self. Be you the first and last to your self" (12). The background for the consideration was always the same, the inevitable Day of Judgment fore let

(12-19).

Persons led readers to consider the created: "to serve

God and

"final

thereby to work our

end" for which we were

own

salvation." This

end

two insights: that nothing else mattered and that every decision had to be based on it (25-26). Persons's words were nearly identical to Ignatius's

led to

First Principle

and Foundation.

Persons observed, however, that though there were

many

readers

few lived out their faith through devotional works. He the slothful hearts presented his work, therefore, "to stir up and awake of Christians to the cogitation of their own estate, and make them more

marked by

faith,

.

.

.

vigilant in this great affaire" (67).

To awaken

summons, Persons used the most introverted section of the Spiritual Exercises, the First Week. There he developed themes such as the readers' sinfulness as a violent affront to God; their affective awakening to the offense; the tangible appreciation of the harm that sin brings to them; the realization that, though they merit eternal damnation, God has kept them until this point from death and just judgment; and finally, the appreciation of what Christ has accomplished through his death readers to this

for them.

This

call

to

resolve

began with "that reckoning day"

terrifying terms Persons portrayed

how

(101).

In

awful judgment day will be. Con-

fronted with extensive citations from apocalyptic literature (107-20), readers learned that on judgment day

"[i]t

will be too late to repent";

good conscience" would be "a singular treasure"

27

as a

Gregory notes that

later Puritans

and

Jesuits

(120).

on

that day "a

Then, everything will

both referred to "consideration'

key concept for self-examination ("True and Zealous Service,"

256).

Unexpected Consequences: Persons's Christian Directory

be exposed,

will be naked,

all

greater

consolation,

worlds"

(121).

The day members

consider, for

misery"

than

all

and "an unspotted conscience the dignities and pleasures of .

11

•$•

.

.

a

shall be a

thousand

will be dreadful, especially for families that failed to

be separated, "the one to glory, the other to

will

(124).

Emphasizing the horrors of judgment day, Persons presented a defense for "the severity of God's judgment." God's infinite dignity could not tolerate the iniquity of the readers' lives. Furthermore, while Christ had already satisfied the judgment against the readers (135), they still failed to consider what God had offered in Christ: God's just judgments, Christ's perfect satisfaction, and their own salvation (144-45).

The

damnation of the inconsiderate was countered by the four "benefits of almighty God" for those who already were considerate: creation in God's image, redemption, vocation, and justification. These beneprovided a surprisingly fits inevitable just

positive side to Persons's the-

ology. For instance,

creation

emphasized the unique tionship

that

with

have

created

you

rela-

readers

could

God

"hath

God.

to the likeness of

no other thing, but of himself, to no other end, but to be

his

this

in

honorable

world and

servant

his co-partner

kingly glory, for

nity to

come"

the

company

was

a

in

all

eter-

^ Persons's

fundamental concern was

with what readers had failed to do. The most offensive of their omissions was "^consideration"; because of it, readers also failed to recognize the

urgent predicaments facing them.

^-^^^—^^—

(157). Similarly, the

redemption revealed

of sinners. Behind Persons's

God

a

God who wanted

of dreadful judgment, there

very amiable, intimate God. But because Persons believed that those not

yet resolved insisted

would only presume upon God's

on God's

it,

Persons

severity.

In order to situation,

love and thereby lose

move

readers to a visceral appreciation of their

Persons proposed

a

own

meditation in which they anticipated their

deathbed experience. Summoning the readers' affections to be moved by "what opinion, sense and feeling" they might have on that day inevitable

(169),

he invited them to consider the three "afflictions" of the wicked on

their deathbed.

The

Each

affliction

concerned separation.

gruesome depiction of death, was literally the physical separation of souls from their bodies: "If then the mortifying of one little part only, doe so much afflict us: imagine what the first,

an

violent mortifying of

extraordinarily

all

panes together

will doe" (174).

The second was the

12

James